Moldable materials including various types of natural and synthetic clays, edible materials such as cookie dough, and modeling compound such as Play-doh (Registered Trademark of Hasbro, Inc.) and Model Magic (Registered Trademark of Crayola LLC) are very popular over a wide age group. Numerous other forms of moldable materials exist.
Considering the large quantities of related products sold throughout the world, there is always a strong market pull for new, different, and unusual toys or other devices that can be used with moldable materials, especially for products targeted at children. Many parents desire for their children to play with toys that include an educational element along with a creative element. Therefore, there have been many toy devices using letters and forms to help teach children the alphabet, words, and the like. The prior art has also taught a wide variety of devices that allow children to form moldable material into a variety of shapes and objects.
Extruders are one type of toy and are used to force a relatively unshaped form of moldable material through an opening or set of openings with a die or die set to create moldable material in various cross-sectional shapes.
Various extruders for such purpose have been previously described. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,157,933 to Boggild et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,076,476 to Ventura, U.S. Pat. No. 6,602,066 to Heayes, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,275,924 to Kreuzer all disclose various toy extruders intended for use with soft moldable materials such as modeling compound to form strips or other elements having a variety of different cross-sections. The collective art teaches different methods for designing the extruder and that a plurality of dies may be employed to enable a child to remove and replace a die having a differently shaped opening whenever a different design or shape of molded article is desired. The designs vary in the level of sophistication, with '924 including an integrated extruder for extruding a quantity of a deformable moldable material. However, all prior art is designed to extrude simple shapes and forms from quantities of modeling compound.
It is desirable to be able to easily create more complex forms, including combining moldable materials with the ability to learn letters and words. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved device or moldable material forming process. It is also an object of the present invention to provide a system and process for making visually appealing forms and shapes with such device and process.
The present invention satisfies these objectives, and provides other advantages as described herein. Improved moldable material and devices, systems, and methods for providing an improved moldable material are provided.